Absolutely agree. There are so many creative but obnoxious design patterns caused by a need to distinguish a brand or the designers seeing themselves as artists more than engineers. Coolness over usability is commonplace, but it's not a good mantra to follow, and it's genuinely refreshing to see stuff like https://www.nngroup.com/ that is usable and functional on all devices, as boring as it may look.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Look at https://play.date/ or https://tokio.rs/, functional yet interesting. Tokio.rs in particular has the best implementation of one of the worst patterns in the modern web: sticky content that changes when you scroll. It's a great visual aid in this case, but becomes annoying quickly when overused.